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<title>Advanced Fawning in Dangerous Situations by communitycrave (rivscreamsnk)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25913230">Advanced Fawning in Dangerous Situations</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivscreamsnk/pseuds/communitycrave'>communitycrave (rivscreamsnk)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Community (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Autistic Character, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, References to Canon, Season 5 Episode 7, Stream of Consciousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:48:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25913230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivscreamsnk/pseuds/communitycrave</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This was bad. This was bad. This was bad. He needed to get out. Okay, okay. Assess the situation. Abed had done something wrong, clearly.</p>
<p>Or: Some of Abed's thoughts on/while being handcuffed to a file cabinet for accidentally spraying stuff all over Hickey's wacky duck drawings.<br/>It will really help for context to have seen the episode Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality during which this is set.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Advanced Fawning in Dangerous Situations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I don't like how this situation with Hickey in season 5 was handled and treated how it was just fine afterwards. (Well, to Troy and Abed, it would definitely be fine, because it's not fyne.) And I just don't like Hickey to be honest, and finding other people have written retribution fics that address his appalling behaviour for what it is, was comforting. So I wrote something myself that might explain why Abed goes back afterwards, and also describes how I interpret his responses in general. The man's traumatised, alright. Well, in my interpretation at least because I project a lot of my own stuff onto him, as one does.<br/>This style of writing is a bit new to me so please bear with me battling through it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This was bad. This was bad. This was bad. He needed to get out. Okay, okay. Assess the situation. Abed had done something wrong, clearly. But he already apologised so where is this coming from? Why did Hickey do this?</p>
<p>“I said I was sorry.”</p>
<p>Wrong answer. Hickey doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t seem to care about intention. Maybe he’s right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Oh wait. Wait. This sounds familiar.</p>
<p>“You think I’m spoiled.”</p>
<p>Hickey’s mistaken. Or maybe he isn’t, but the point is that this is familiar. Okay, okay, shifting the focus might help. If Abed can appeal to Hickey’s feelings, maybe that could help. He’d learnt that often, being bullied was not necessarily so much about him as well as the bully. It might be worth a shot.</p>
<p>“When was the last time someone physically limited you?”</p>
<p>Oh no. That wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for. But maybe he could salvage this, find a way to talk about Hickey. Also to have some more time to assess the situation further. He needed a plan. He needed a plan.</p>
<p>“Drawings of what?”</p>
<p>It seemed important to reassure him. Keep it going. Keep it going. Okay, okay, if he could just focus on this. It could help. Possibly. He could try figuring out what Hickey needed from him. The laugh seemed to be taken well. Alright. If he could make Hickey like him a bit more, then maybe. Maybe that would help. It couldn’t be bad, right?</p>
<p>“These are really good.”</p>
<p>It seemed to be working. He seemed slightly less accusatory in his response. Okay, okay. Good. Keep it going. Be sincere. Be apologetic. After all, Abed did make a mistake. And he needed to convince Hickey to let him go. Who seemed to be a lot friendlier now. This could be it.</p>
<p>“All right. Well…” This was it. “I can see from the clock that if I hit all the green lights I-“</p>
<p>Shit. Suddenly, a shot of energy, tension, anger maybe, shot through Abed’s body and he shifted gears. He just started yelling and didn’t stop, not being entirely sure where all these words were coming from but grateful they were there nonetheless. Being nice hadn’t worked. Hickey thought he needed to learn. He kept yelling just to match Hickey’s behaviour. Until-</p>
<p>“You made me miss my movie.”</p>
<p>And it dawned on Abed what was actually happening here. How immensely absurd this situation even was- Thankfully, the change in strategy had done something for Hickey as well. And he was let go. This was actually unreal.</p>
<p>“In the words of your hacky duck, ‘what the hell?’”</p>
<p>He didn’t wait for an answer, because he needed to get out of there. Before anything else bad happened. Abed had gone into survival mode so immediately that he could only really start to realise what the hell just happened after it was over. This was really weird and wrong and also, it hurt. His wrist hurt from the handcuff, which- why did Hickey even <em>have</em> handcuffs in his office? It shouldn’t- it wasn’t okay to just handcuff a student to file cabinet, right? Because that was what had just happened. That was what had just happened. And he hadn't even been scared, until now. Now he realised this was actually really scary. Thankfully, his wrist looked okay. There might be a bruise later from how tight it was and how hard he'd pulled on the cabinet while half trying to break it, but that was not important. Yet.</p>
<p>First he needed to figure out what to even do about the fact that this had just happened. If Troy had been there, maybe he could tell Abed what the options were for what to do about this now. Because he wasn’t sure. Should he tell someone about this? Could he tell someone about this? Would they even believe him? Troy would. But Troy was gone. Abed had to figure this out himself. And there wasn’t anything he could immediately relate this to. There were no tv shows or movie that came to mind. Only. Only the one he was now missing. Because of this absurd thing.</p>
<p>He couldn’t really tell what Hickey was thinking either. The way he’d let Abed go made him think he might have acted without thinking it through. But, it did seem clear that Hickey thought he was spoiled. That people finally taking him for who he was and treating him with respect and taking him seriously was unreasonable. Like most people did.</p>
<p>Given that, Abed knew only one way to make this work somewhat. He didn’t want to run the risk of telling this to the others, because they might start to see Hickey’s point and make things worse for him. No, he couldn’t run that risk. That wasn’t worth it. That wasn’t worth it. What happened, happened. He could only work to prevent it from happening again. So he needed Hickey to like him. Well like was a strong word. But he needed common ground.</p>
<p>There was one option. Hickey had mentioned he’d been a cop. And he was trying to be creative. Maybe that old script Abed still had would be a good combination of both. If he could show Hickey he needed him, then maybe he wouldn’t be, well, he wouldn’t end up being handcuffed again.</p>
<p>Being underestimated in this case was better than being overestimated. If he could make Hickey help him, he needed to present it in a way that made Hickey feel that he wouldn’t ever be able to achieve anything with this script if he wouldn’t help. Meanwhile, Abed would have to watch his quirks and how visible they were, but if he could present this to Hickey in a way that suggested he didn’t know any better, that should give him some space. To be himself.</p>
<p>It wasn’t fun to go back to Hickey’s office. It was easier than it should be, too. But this process was all too familiar to him. And trying to play nice and make the other person like him was really the path he was most practiced in. Just take the bad things. The world simply worked like that. Not entirely, he’d learnt, but enough that that was his reality most of the time.</p>
<p>Of course it worked. Hickey looked at the script, realised it was a disaster, and seemed keen on helping. This wasn’t for nothing then. This would make future interactions between them easier. Because he wouldn’t have to tiptoe around himself as much. What was most important was Hickey thinking Abed didn’t do those things he considered bad on purpose. Because Abed really didn’t.</p>
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